Selling Links - Good or Bad? Advantages and Disadvantages?

The reasons why I do not sell links are really simple... Why should I give an advantage to anyone who is interested in acquiring easy links? Yeah, bought links are easy ones because they’re not hobby sites which tend to buy links; they’re shops the most, online casinos, gambling sites and so on. A shop with daily turn-over of about $500 or $5000 can easily spend up to $1000 on links each month. A casino with daily turn-over of $100000 can buy virtually any number of links. Maybe even more than more! What seems to be a good secondary income for a web site’s owner, is just a funny thing for links buyers.

• Sold links are easy money!
• If your website is devoted to gaming, games, casinos (all meant in educational terms), then it is fucking easy to earn thousands of dollars each month by selling links! All you need is a website of some age, indexed by Google, PageRank (the higher, the better), and some traffic.
• Once your website is found by one buyer, others will follow! Imagine a bee that found flowers; The rest will arrive very soon! Buyers find links of their competitors and they try to gain same.
• Very fast payments not depending on traffic!

• Once you're caught, your website may be banned!
• Not everyone is going to offer you $100 per month for a single link. One will offer you $100, another may offer you $10 per month!
• Traffic has nothing in common with the value of links! 10000 visits a day? Still a link on your website can be worth $5 per month!
• Once you're caught, your website may be banned! I know that I repeat this twice; It's because you have to calculate potential troubles. If you're earning $5000 per month with AdSense, it's not worth selling links that bring another $100 per single month!

Even I do link to other domains, such links are not sold at all. For instance, the target sites may be my friends’ sites or they may belong to my former clients. When I am working for someone, I am not selling links. However, mentioning such sites within my own websites is just fun. Sometimes I can explain some SEO aspect there...

If you think that paid directories are bought links only, you may be wrong. Not every directory which asks money for listing is automatically a paid one. There are two (three) kinds of “paid” directories:

• Directories that ask money for review, but they don’t guarantee the successful approval
• Directories that don’t care about quality of the websites listed within and they approve every paid submission
• Directories that don’t accept free submissions

Actually, the first case is the best optioin for every directory’ owner. Offering a free link along with paid reviews is worth a try especially if your directory’ queue is too long. Reviewing 200 or 2000 sites takes some time and those who want to be reviewed first should pay something in order to get this advantage. My own directory worked just like this.

Let’s return back to paid links... If you own a quality web site, you’ll be probably contacted by your direct competitors in the matter of selling a link, two or more. They usually cover their goal into cool words about small advertisement. But as they reveal their offer, you’ll find it to be links buying only... Now picture yourself as a business’ owner. Would you like to see your competitor buying links and acquiring your positions? Hm, I wouldn’t like to do so. So why should I help anyone doing evil?

As time goes by, almost every opinion may change. Stop to cruelty to animals will stay the same, but links buying may be worth sometimes. When?

• When one is going to buy a link for more than a month or two, AND
• When one is going to buy a link for over $30 per month (or the total price for 2-3 links is at least $30/month), AND
• When you're not going to link to a poor website, AND
• When you're going to invest these money into further growth of your website!

Especially the last point is the most important one! Say that you sell a couple of links for $1000 per year. You receive the money and you invest them into your website. In return you attract more and more visitors! Sometimes it can be good to sell a couple of links because the money are necessary. The growth is necessary too. I am against accepting every offer. Only reasonable will be considered! You can make another $10000 or $20000 per year by selling links. These money can cover paying a dedicated server (or a couple of dedicated servers).

Modified on October 6, 2009; Originally published on November 6, 2007